Heroes of Ruin is a recently announced 3DS title being published by Square Enix. Developed in Florida, Heroes represents yet another entry into the crowded ARPG genre, but on a different system with several nice perks, HoR should still find a foothold to squeak into its own niche.

The game touts the drop in, drop out multiplayer gameplay necessary for a handheld, but the connectivity goes deeper than just getting your buddy on board to whack enemies with you. Heroes of Ruin tracks and remembers all the items you have sold and when connecting with other players. This list will be transmitted to their game and your sold
items will become available in their shops. This is a great way to find rare items that somebody else's class could not equip but match yours perfectly.

The game invites people to "dive into a world where storytelling is as important as combat." Though we weren't told too many overarching plot details, we were treated to the game's quest system, which will have a mix of both main
story arc quests as well as optional side-stories which the player can complete along the way or wilfully ignore. One of the optional tasks was to free a tree from the taint of wraiths. Once at the tree, a small puzzle was presented to remove the pesky ghosts from the roots and restore the branches to their former glory.

While the analog sticks are used to move around, the D-pad has not been ignored. Mapped to each direction is a frequently used command: left and right for health and mana potions, up to equip a highlighted item on the ground, and down to sell the item instead; this makes tracking equipment and inventory a total breeze. Players can attack with the A button and map skills to the other three. Skills are learned as a character levels up and moves through its respective skill tree. Some skills require a raw level, while others require lower tier skills to learn.

We finished off the demo with a boss fight that demonstrated how fighting smarter rather than harder was the key to success; the boss had a crystal attached to one arm which was not reachable while he was standing normally. However, if taunted into attacking he swung his
arm down, allowing the crystal to be attacked for large amounts of damage. The demo ended on a cliffhanger, with a second boss pouncing forth to do battle, but for that fight we'll have to wait until the game's release.